Friday, February 29, 2008

I Am Not the Best Writer

I'm on a twenty-minute break before my final consulting appointment this Writing Center Friday No. 5. So far, five one-hour appointments and one half-hour appointment. Many of them have been in the early stages of drafting for papers due next week. Twice today I have heard the entry's title--and not only from students I worked with directly. Much apologizing is trafficked in the Writing Center for some reason or other: I'm sorry I was late. I'm sorry my draft is partial/messy/unfinished/gibberish/hackneyed/confusing/stained with coffee. I'm sorry I didn't bring my sources. I'm sorry I had a garlic bagel for lunch. I'm sorry my handwriting is illegible. And so on. Maybe this is cause enough for a gigantic vinyl banner at the front door that settles it from the outset: "All apologies accepted."

I don't begrudge anyone that felt need to level things up and make explicit one's own sense of the text (or situation) before sharing it with others. I am prone to it myself (Oh, here's a crude draft. Forgive me.) It's just a pattern that has started to stand out after five weeks of longish Fridays in the WC--a pattern I probably could have anticipated had I thought about it long enough, since it turns up in classes and other venues where writing is circulated--a graceful gesture of recovery from the mustard-stain quality of so much in-progress writing.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Be Kind Rewind

Ph. and I took in Be Kind Rewind last weekend. It's a fun, quirky flick about the desperate, inventive measures by video rental store workers to recover after all of the tapes are erased. They even have a trailer:

Catchiest for me was the premise of Sweding--home-grown, bricolage film-making (grab a VHS camera, some magic markers, tin foil, etc.). The movie gets a lot of mileage out of the idea, and in the escalating scramble to re-make the erased movies, all sorts of mishaps come about: copyright infringement, battles over microfame, VHS/DVD format tensions, and arguments over store-shelf economics. But Sweding as an art stance, as a geek-hack aesthetic method: even if you already knew what make-do composition was, the movie gives the idea a nudge, renews some of the pleasure and spark in the spirit of carefree re-makes--enough of a bump that we're sure to see more YouTubic transmedia, like this Sweded version of The Shining:

Eesh. Might be creepier than the original, if a bit less drawn out in its suspense.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Lettuce Balloon

Many many years ago, when I was in my late twenties, I interviewed for a job as a sales rep with this company.

I didn't get the job. They said they weren't convinced I wanted it (clairvoyant HR?). Of course, it is always the case with rejections that, upon hearing of them, I snarl, grind the bad news to a fine dust with resentment and double it back, confirming (in the comfort of my private, pacifying thoughts) that they were probably right: I didn't want it. They did, however, gift me a conciliatory packet of sticky notes marked with their logo; I was reminded of the job when I found one of those sticky notes holding a forgotten page (all this time, what was it marking?) in a book I leafed through the other day.

I bring this up today not because I wish I'd won that job, but because I wish I had one of their fancy packaging gizmos, specifically the one that produces the lettuce balloon. I'd like one of those to insulate my head for the last six or seven days of February each and every year--to get me through to March. It must be so peaceful and quiet inside of a lettuce balloon--so clean and fresh-smelling. Extended shelf life. Effortless salad. Also, had I a lettuce balloon around my noggin I would not be waylaid by this ache-making, throat-blistering crud that has clutched me in its unrelenting grasp since yesterday afternoon.

On top of being sick, there is more to throw off the late Feb. hermitage and regular work rhythms: a winter storm, a miniseminar, stacks upon stacks of unsorted papers (not "student" papers, but receipts, tax prep materials, misc. articles, foot stool assembly instructions, etc.) on my desk, a handout to cook up for a brief RNF-style talk for tomorrow's Visiting Days panel, Tuesday-night consulting in the WC, a quick textbook review to send back to BSM, an essay to submit for a U.-wide conte$t entry, if only I could find a minute to tune it, and some other stuff I can't remember, like "Oh, we're out of hot tea."

Lettuce balloon, oh, lettuce balloon.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

To The Skunk

To the unprovoked skunk who, overnight, delivered an unrelenting, through-the-walls-seeping odor-maker in/around/under the garage: We will not remain friends if you ever, ever do that again.

Second, Subsequent Streams

Revisions have been challenging. Having resolved myself to more drafting before squaring with revisions, the commented drafts of my dissertation's introduction and first two chapters tend to taunt me. I haven't figured out how to fit it in, how to make room for it given the other regular paces. I'd been meaning (for a couple of weeks) to get through some of the first-stage directorial comments to those early chapters, mostly because I want them to be ready for the rest of my committee sometime in Marchpril and also because I have at least one other reader who I'm trying to get them ready for. So I took a leap head-long into the "When will I revise?" problem on Saturday, and spent most of the day with it.

The introduction was fairly easy. It's elastic: short, overviewy, and without glaring needs. It was manageable to get through all of the comments, and make appropriate adjustments, leaving aside the summaries of the last two chapters (5, 6) because are yet unwritten. But working through Chapter One was somewhat more daunting; I expected this since it is much thicker than the introduction. I got through all of the superficial stuff, and ended up with a list, indexed by page, of what is left: two placeholder notes (no work required), four easy changes (citation adding, a one-sentence gloss on this or that), seven moderately difficult changes (almost all of which require some re-reading of sources), and one major change (a section that I will probably re-write from scratch with a slightly different--simpler--focus). It is helpful to have the index; but I don't know when I will get to it. Perhaps in Marchpril. Or Mayune. (Ay, clearly, we need a better vocabulary for two-month units).

I am not in panic mode about the demands of revision, the frequency or scope of the changes due (I know because I have not been tempted to add exclamatory emphasis to any of this.). But I still don't know how to work those revisions into what has been, out of necessity, a fairly compacted daily schedule. In this room-for-revision conundrum there lingers a problem of rhythm-breaking, and it's difficult to embrace that challenge when it's been so challenging just to establish a more or less even writing rhythm (the dailiness of dissertating, call it). Perhaps as much as anything, blogging has prepared me for the dailiness, but I still feel somewhat spun-around (i.e., vertigahh!) by the prospect of taking revision very seriously while drafting. To say nothing of other projects needing attention. So maybe if I stack all of it in a tidy pile on the deepest corner of my desk, it will still be there when I get to it in a couple of weeks.

Monday, February 18, 2008

An Event

Two tables over from the place in Panera where I am working this morning--hi-ho, hi-ho, they are planning an event:

"Dick said he didn't know pickles and potato chips were important.
They are!"

"They were chocolate covered nuts, and they were delicious. I have been eating one or two a day just to make them last. Just one or two, and that was enough."

You can, of course, see why it has been impossible for me to concentrate. Perhaps the event they are planning is a (surprise?) party for the more or less completed draft of Chapter Four later this month, in which case, I should resolve to work elsewhere for the next two weeks.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Regan, "Type Normal Like the Rest of Us"

Regan, Alison. "'Type Normal Like the Rest of Us': Writing, Power, and Homophobia in the Networked Composition Classroom." Computers and Composition 9.4 (Nov 1993): 11-23. <http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/archives/v10/10_4_html/10_4_2_Regan.html>

Regan accounts for her own move away from traditional interaction toward networked classrooms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, noting that she looked forward to using LANs for discussion. She also acknowledges apprehensions she felt and she call into question the promise of social equality online.

What are the types of exclusion manifesting in these presumably inviting, inclusive, and egalitarian spaces? Regan explores this question, particularly where homophobic views are expressed by students in one online interchange when, while, she explains, they were "on-task."

The article touches on points about silencing (how silencing works differently between conventional classroom discussions and LAN-based chats), and how the synchronous discussion platform lengthens the life of the utterances relative to ordinary in-class discussion. Regan acknowledges the work done by others, such as Kremers, on "wilding" and the perils of off-task conversations, but she is more concerned with on-task discussion and the ways exclusionary discourse is a part of it.

Accounting for a scenario involving homophobic language and another situation in which she left the room only to have a student use her terminal and screen name to tell the class to "type normal like the rest of us," Regan concludes that vestiges of authority will linger do matter how much we attempt to divest ourselves of it in the "liberatory" medium of the LAN interchange.

"I am not suggesting that we should shut down discussions of lesbian and gay issues because they might make us or our students uncomfortable. It is important, however, that we be aware of the possible consequences of those discussions, and it may be important that we take an active role in framing those discussions. The very way that homosexuality is introduced into the rhetoric and composition curriculum is problematic. Because I am particularly interested in computer-mediated classroom discussion, I have focused on these instances of student expressions of homophobia, rather than examining instances of institutional homophobia."

"This exhortation serves as a reminder of two important points: first, even the instructor who shares authority remains identified with institutional power, and second, any person who is "different" disturbs the classroom environment. The command to "type normal" is nothing less than a command to be normal; John's remarks were never unreadable, they simply did not conform to the standards maintained by his classmates and instructor.

Thus, even within a space where expression appears most free, institutional and social forms of authority remain."

Notch for Orange, Notch for the Belt of Verbs

Syracuse's home win over the Hoyas earlier today inspired thoughts of a verb to add to the belt:

The Orange clowned No. 8 Georgetown, 77-70, in front of a season-high 31,327 fans at the Carrier Dome.

Clown as verb: to subject to ridicule, to cause another to appear silly, etc. Unlike evidence and discourse (as verbs), it is improbable that I will ever sneak clown or clowned into the academic prose.

Nevertheless, in celebration of the upset, go on, add it to your belt of verbs.

Previously on B. O. V.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Le Menu

My turn for grocery shopping this week, so I retrieved the goods on 2/10. And here is my plan, school lunch-menu style:

Monday: Vegetable chili (var. of this) with a loaf of thin-sliced sourdough.
Tuesday: Applesauce pancakes with veg-protein sausages and SW vegetable medley.
Wednesday: Homemade pizzas. Choice: ham, chicken, fresh basil, alfredo OR pepperoni, hot olive mix, tomato sauce.
Thursday: A tear-filled mug of lonesome (as the girls fly west for the weekend and Ph. and I enjoy bottomless bowl-o-cold-cereal?). Maybe a Stauffer's bag meal. Also, I have the materials for chipped beef, a dish I haven't had since 1985.
Friday: Cellophane delight leftovers (as Ph., too, vacates, gone skiing).
Saturday: Erawan Thai take-out in celebration of SU's stunning win over Georgetown.
Sunday: Bowl of popcorn. Reminds me of a teammate in college who was not kidding (even though everyone laughed uncomfortably) when he said he curbed his hunger by filling up on water and going straightaway to sleep.

Monday, February 11, 2008

ACTropolis

Saturday evening I went online for the exclusive purpose of registering Ph. to take the ACT in June (so that ACTropolis doesn't seem like something I made up, follow the link). His guidance counselor encouraged him to sign up online rather than on paper. It has been seventeen or eighteen years since I signed anyone up to take the ACT. I am old; the process has grown unbelievably cumbersome under a sharp jump in the value of high school student profiles to predatory admissions practices. This is the database at its collect-all worst. Had there been all of this data-collection all those years ago, I almost certainly would have been more enthusiastically recruited. Right?

I filled out screen after screen of profiling data related to Ph.'s high school program of study, extracurricular activities, career aspirations, and so on. Somewhere along the way, I also selected a testing date (June) and site (Jamesville-Dewitt H.S., the nearest site with an open seat). Near the end of the process, an hour later, D. and I chatted briefly and agreed that he should be scheduled for a slightly different test. The ACT offers one test with writing and one without. I clicked back into the web form, switched that one item, and clicked 'continue' until I was at the pay screen. Then I input the payment information, clicked on 'submit payment', and held my breath hoping for a felicitous conclusion to the ACTropolis 5K.

Everything was fine. And then I clicked the 'print confirmation' button. Calamity! The page showed the wrong testing date; Ph. had been signed up for the April date rather than the June date. What the? Next, I tried 'Change Testing Date'. Something I learned: you can change the testing date for a modest $20.85 (or thereabouts), even if the transaction is hot, still flowing through the pipes. Also, I have since learned that the ACT system requires you to re-submit a payment for the full cost of the test when you change the date. Within three days they will refund the amount posted for the initial (mistaken) sign-up.

Rather than panic, I retraced my steps and learned that the web form automatically resets the testing date to the default setting (April) at the moment any action is taken on that step in the process. Changing the test type caused the test date to reset. I simply didn't notice, perhaps because I was numb from the deadening tedium of filling out profiling questions for more than an hour. I would be out twenty bucks for my oversight, which was terrible enough to tarnish the entire ACT sign-up experience for me. So I filled out the customer service form, sent it, and wrote a note to myself to call on Monday. Today.

I called. The first service rep heard me all the way through a rendition of what I've just shared with you. She explained the delayed refund process, and said she would have an IT person call me about the problem with the web form. Cool. Later, the call came, I described the problem--almost certainly a short circuit between my own weekend blink-out (Why should an established entry reset without notification?) and the aliveness of the seat-counting ACT registration form (which interacts immediately, ticking off seats in the database as they are filled). You won't believe what happened next: I was thanked for the feedback, offered to by-pass the change of date fee, and asked to share the few pieces of information they needed to correct my mistake. The sun suddenly shined on ACTropolis; on the horizon, a rainbow.

It never ever works out this way for me. Thus, I have resolved that today, February 11, will be an annual holiday, a day of respite during which I shall not have a single negative thought about standardized testing, the filing and profiling of youth into quasi-normative rank (for lists, which will be $wooped up by admissions offices), the profit-making at the heart of the enterprise, the tyranny of No. 2 lead, the mechanical ways of ACTropolis (even the corny-tropolis name itself). Today I am at strangely at peace with the ACT, and maybe even a little bit grateful.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Feed Reader Live

Back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back consulting appointments in the Writing Center today. Nine of them; every time slot filled between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., although my third appointment (slotted for a half hour) was a no-show. Just now I had to check my "tutor utilization" report in Tutortrac to make sure I had the count right. By about 3 p.m., I was beginning to feel a little over-utilized. Simple fatigue more than disappointment or dissatisfaction. I singed up for this, and longish Fridays keep a couple of other days of the week free (free-ish) for pure, uninterrupted work on the blissertation.

The conversations went as follows:

  1. WRT205 inquiry essay on the constraints on graffiti as it is co-opted by corporations trying to appeal to a market niche while it also faces scorn as a vulgar form relative to more traditional and legitimized art forms.
  2. WRT205 cultural memory essay on the iconic force of MLK Jr.'s photograph in front of Lincoln Memorial. The claims and propositions have been a struggle in the essays about popular photos and American cultural memory; they risk tumbling into the abyss of grand sweeping declarations about what most Americans think.
  3. No show.
  4. First regular meeting with a student enrolled in WRT220: Writing Enrichment. This one-credit course pairs a student (who opts in) for weekly meetings with a consultant throughout the term. It is taken for pass-fail credit, and in the meetings we are concerned with writing across the student's full set of courses (the focus is not exclusive to WRT courses, in other words).
  5. Break. But for the first half hour of it, I joined a conversation with an SU alum (recently finished undergrad) who set an appointment in the WC to talk with her former WRT instructor about how best to approach admissions to an MA in a comp-rhet program that would allow her to explore interests in creative nonfiction, TESOL, and professional/technical communication. I don't know whether I helped matters any by carrying on about stuff to consider. Any thoughts?
  6. A SOC101 paper on the "sociological imagination." Lots of references to "society", which is, I take it, a major issue in today's introductory sociology curriculum.
  7. A GEO paper on push-pull theories of migration.
  8. A follow-up (returner from last Friday) with an essay for WRT205 on food politics: the burst in organic goods.
  9. The rough half-draft of a 1000-word personal statement for a McNair Scholarship application.
  10. Another WRT205 inquiry essay: explain how specific examples of humor deepen and complicate a pressing social issue. Here the focus was on Moore's Sicko and private health care.

I was warned that Fridays might be light and breezy, with few students checking in because it's the spring semester and, well, it's Friday. Need more reason than that to steer clear of the Writing Center? The packed Friday doesn't leave any room at the end of my week for double-dipping (working while at work), but it definitely has its advantages. The conversations are focused and time-bound. Today someone suggested that my Friday hours were freakishly demanding, but I tend to think of it more along the lines of seven hours with an RSS reader, only the feeds are embodied differently; the writers of the works are sitting down with me and having a conversation: Writing Center work as a nine-scene Google Reader Live skit with a clearly defined "Mark all as read" at the end of the day.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Doubling Back

I emerged from Netheruary break on Monday still in a bit of a haze from the weekend. Did you see that the Giants won the Superbowl? Enjoyed every minute of it.

But this is an entry about the diss. I expected that I would bound back into my daily paces on Monday, resume the 9-noon sessions, aiming for roughly two pages each day so as to have a draft of Chapter Four by the end of February. But I fell into a slump. I couldn't see the chapter. I knew vaguely what I wanted to do. I had an outliney plan, a few notes, a bottle of Vitamin Water. I had the graphs I painstakingly built day by day throughout January. And I remain fond of the graphs. I think they're quite good for getting at what I take to be the aim of the chapter. But! I couldn't grasp the chapter; couldn't sense it, couldn't begin it in a smart-enough place. And, therefore, piling them up 2 p. by 2 p. by 2 p., I typed nearly seven pages of rubbish between Monday and Wednesday. I would excerpt some of it to win my point; then again, I would never subject you to such inhospitable treatment.

Is this self-deprecation? Nah. It's an acknowledgement that even at half-way into the project, it has its challenges. Writing a dissertation is not like climbing a hill for sledding; the burden felt in the first half does not mean the second half will be a wild and reckless get-out-of-my-way joy ride with hot cocoa waiting when I've had enough. Instead, because I am so far removed from much of the work I did in the first two chapters, I struggle against the need to re-explain, re-set-up, re-establish some of the conceptual bounds I introduced early on. Thank goodness, my director listened to my dilemma yesterday and told me this: "Give it a clean break." And so I have. I began again, setting aside the seven awkward, stilted, unfocused pages I cringed through Mon-Wed. Suddenly, it is much better (although the sun did not beam through the gray clouds; it is still Syracuse in February). I can sense the chapter, and the opening gambit is a million times (er, at least 10,000 times) better than what I tried the first go-round.

What I want to note about this is that I am becoming both more humble and more mature (i.e., flexible) about my writing. I knew something was wrong; I knew a conversation in which I could unload a few of my cryptic thoughts would help. And I didn't feel so strongly about the seven pages that I was the least bit sorry about relegating them to the junk heap. I remember a time when I would have felt so invested in something of that length that I would have clung desperately to it and finessed it until I believed it was salvageable--even if it wasn't. I'm still getting used to the idea of scrapping large passages--even pages--of whatever I've written. I've never found the thought all that appealing. Well-timed, I guess, given that I leafed through Murray's The Craft of Revision after the title turned up on the WPA-L the other day. He begins Chapter One, "Write to Rewrite," with a short epigraph from Beckett: "Fail. Fail again. Fail better." I suppose it's reasonable to say I am failing better today than I was earlier this week.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

George, "Taking Women Professors Seriously"

George, E. Laurie. "Taking Women Professors Seriously: Female Authority in the Computerized Classroom." Computers and Composition 7 (April 1990; Special issue): 45-52. <http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/archives/v7/7_spec_html/7_spec_3_George.html>

George attempts to reconcile the principles of feminist pedagogy promoted by Adrienne Rich in her 1979 article, "Taking Women Students Seriously," with the tensions she experiences when teaching composition at the New York Institute of Technology. George acknowledges that the working conditions for women professors have improved since Rich presented her work; yet, it is not always so simple to relinquish all power and authority to students who tend to let loose with unfiltered crudity when they are asked to discuss topics using a LAN chat room. She refers specifically to a case where one student jokes about getting beers for class and then inquires about the teacher's sex life. George also includes a transcript of an interchange from a class taught by Kremers, a colleague of hers at NYIT. When several students begin to engage in an explicit sequence of the dozens, the teacher intervenes with, "Someone comment on how the dialogue is going." Next, a student remarks, "I think this is a sick bunch of students." This is a fairly complicated interchange. From it, George works toward claims about the challenge of balancing her principled feminist pedagogy with measure of control and authority: "My overall point here is that, as numerous theorists of collaborative and feminist pedagogy concur, students who have been culturally programmed and disempowered for so long have a great deal of trouble knowing what to do with power once it is given to them" (para. 17).

At the end of this short article, George asserts that it is a matter of responsibility to "tak[e] seriously my authority to control those reins" (para. 19) where students are "wilding" or acting up, particularly in those environs where authority is shared or where conventional authority structures are loosened. This argument runs parallel to Kremers' article in the sense that the giving over to underlife is never wholesale; some aspect of authority is withheld. And it would stand to reason that this could be made explicit--that everyone involved could be forewarned. Of course, these early networked conversations were relatively contained. The disruptive/contained dyad pertains here because the network does not span beyond the classroom scene.

Quotations:

The democratic principles of feminist pedagogy are also fostered by student work spaces, for they are much more ample than those in the traditional classrooms, indicating a professional respect for the students' authority. (para. 7)

This practice of privately consulting each student as others write independently reinforces to the entire class that a communal activity need not be equated with rigid repetition of boring drills, just as it proves that there is room for individuality and even privacy within group work. (para. 8)

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Write-Up

Nice to see a couple of my long-time friends from the K.C. area featured in a write-up from alma mater's sports information office. The memories A. recounts in this story are very familiar; for several months about ten years ago he and I met every couple of weeks for lunch at the Kabob House on Wornall Ave. to catch up about a wide variety of things, including his monthly letter to members of the national antique dealers association he presided over at the time. Fine visits. I met him and got to know his family after I was given an award named for his late wife, C.

My good friend, E., also appears in the photo. In the article, A. recounts some of the conditions surrounding the men's soccer program in the 1960s, and E. is the current men's soccer coach. He played futbol at alma mater at the same I was an undergraduate in the early 90s, he stood in my and D.'s wedding party in '03, and so on. When I miss living in Kansas City, these guys are high among the leading reasons why.

Pride

Billie tagged me with the book meme, so I figured I may as well get on with proliferating it. It's the p. 123 meme, the one where you pick up the nearest book of more than 123 pages, flip to page 123, jump over the first five sentences, and then post the next three. My selection:

Where'd they come from, sir?
Those things aren't wild out here, are they?
No, not wild.

This comes from Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novella based on a true story about a pride of lions freed from the Baghdad zoo on the first night of the air strikes in 2003. I borrowed it yesterday and then read it this morning before everyone (other than Is.) was awake. It was written by Brian Vaughn (Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina) and drawn by Niko Henrichon, and the build-up and presentation are terrific, right in line with Vaughn's other stuff.

The last piece of the meme requires that I tag five others (chain-letter style, the last person to break the meme, so I hear, spontaneously combusted). Because I'm curious what they're reading these days, let me try Tricia, Brian, Julie, Jeff, and Malcolm.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Kremers, "Sharing Authority on a Synchronous Network"

Kremers, Marshall. "Sharing Authority on a Synchronous Network: The Case for Riding the Beast." Computers and Composition 7 (April 1990; Special issue): 33-44. <http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/archives/v7/7_spec_html/7_spec_2_Kremers.html>

Kremers examines different manners of teacher-presence in synchronous chats using ENFI (Electronic Networks For Interaction), an early multi-user LAN messaging client. How can the live chatroom interchanges bolstering student interest in the other writing they are asked to do in their writing courses? He is also interested in the risky, experimental side of the technology as it allows him to more radically vary assertions of teacherly authority: "The teaching model I am trying to develop is a networked writing class in which authority is shared, decentralized, distributed, even communal; a class in which teachers sometimes participate directly in the discussion and at other times stay out of things, letting their students take control of their own dialogues; a class in which students compete among themselves for influence in the group through the force of their language and the clarity of their arguments" (para. 2). He offers examples of the chat transcripts that best illustrate two primary approaches to pedagogy using the ENFI system: a teacher intervention model and a non-intervention model.

The teacher intervention model presumes a teacher-centered classroom or, at least, a scene in which the teacher's presence in the conversation actively moderates the dialogue. After framing his pedagogy as student-centered (following Knoblauch and Brannon's articulation of this model) Kremer explains that he prefers to use the chat room (during certain class sessions; not all of them) because he "want[s] to write with them rather than talk with them" (para. 9). What is gained by writing with? Positive aspects of this approach include a sense of ownership felt by students who, after they mature beyond a mutinous stage, stand to realize the advantages such interactions have for concept formation, inquiry, and invention. Even while using the intervention approach, Kremers says he does so to act as a guide (one who asks questions and collaborations) rather than as a dominating force of authority. He explains that the path of the conversation is unpredictable, that it is "more spontaneous, more organic" than in many of the more traditional activities they engage with in a writing class.

The non-intervention model, on the other hand, embraces precepts from Elbow's Writing Without Teachers: Kremers might leave the room or observe their interactions without getting directly involved. Later, he observed the chat transcripts to see what transpired. His example suggests a surprising turn, in which a role-playing activity around the issue of rain forest preservation resulted in the off-ing of one of the made-up participants (Pat Tree). Out of this, Kremers devised prompts for subsequent classes, and he found that the students grew still more enthusiastic about what they were being asked to do. The non-intervention transcript functioned as a catalyst for other writing.

Kremers mentions in his conclusion that "[f]or the most part...the students I have worked with so far have not taken up the offer of partnership as readily as I have wished" (para 22). The final section, "Authority Sharing in the Future," speculates that long-standing traditions of teacher-dominated classrooms affect the expectations of everyone, students and teachers alike, who gather in that scene. Kremers is optimistic about the promise of "networked co-authoring" for getting at some of the currents that run beneath the more decorously-ordered classroom.

There is an unmistakable parallel here between the creative and expressive dimensions of the LAN chat room and the more formal writing occasions served by these activities. The references to student-centeredness from Knoblauch and Brannon, the mention of Elbow, and Kremers' own appeals to the sparking of student interest in narrative ("So, by not intervening, I let the students set their own direction for their writing" (para. 19)), all seem to be lorded over by some under-represented force--the serious1 variety of academic writing. This is, then, an early example of "networked authoring," one that was promising because it is a relay in service of something more substantive.

Rundown

A rundown: looong day and there is much to list.

  • Is. is 18-months old today. Half-way through the omigoodness ones.
  • I began the morning in the writing center at 9:00 a.m. with four scheduled appointments between 9-5. By 10:00 a.m., my 9 o'clock hadn't shown, but the remaining slots in my seven hours of Friday WC availability were filled. Lunch aside, I had seven appointments and just two no-shows, the one at 9 and another at 4:30.
  • Snow day? This warrants a snow day? The weather was a little bit snowy blowy and then freezy-rain-where's-your-umblrella? and then drizzly Icee puddleslush today, but Ph. and I both managed to walk out of the house at 7:30 a.m., get into the car, and drive to his school without ever considering that school might be canceled. For what? At the school parking lot: where is everyone? This has never happened before. Today was the lamest Syracuse City School District cancellation in our 3.5 years here. By a long shot.
  • Ph. dashed through a 25.4s 200-meters the other night in his leg of the 4x200 relay over at Manley Fieldhouse. Said this was good enough to win his leg of the race and help the relay team to a second place finish out of twenty-eight schools.
  • Fri&ays between now and early May are wildcard work days. Whether or not I touch the diss on Fridays will depend entirely on how filled up the WC schedule becomes. 'Course, this is also a way to keep my trips to campus down to two per week, so there are certain advantages in holding long Friday hours. Plus, the conversations today were encouraging. Out of the seven visits, three came from grad students working on various projects (cover letter, teaching philosophy, and a paper for an IT seminar). The four undergraduates were working at different stages of projects for WRT205.
  • I had some vague notion that I would begin writing in earnest on Chapter Four in February, but today's bookedness means that the February drafting push will properly begin on Monday. Between now and then, a sixty hour intermonth of Netheruary, the entire duration of which I intend to spend relaxing.
  • I officially passed my qualifying exams one year ago. Does that ever seem like a looong time ago. Regrettably we did not celebrate this anniversary with Thai food nor any other special indulgence. Also, it seems sort of sad to look back on that entry and see 23 congratulatory comments. If I'm counting right, I've received just 22 comments in the intervening year. How's that for blogospheric recession?
  • I didn't have all that much time to get grumped up about it, but the AirOrange connection in the WC was slooow. Slow like it was starting early in its own celebration of Netheruary.